wash in cold water, do not tumble dry
by writerdragonfly
Summary: "Meeting you was fate, becoming your friend was a choice, but falling in love with you was beyond my control." -Unknown. Part of the "cycles of us" Series, and sequel to lather, rinse, repeat. Moreid.


**_Author's Note:_**

This is a chaptered sequel to **_lather, rinse, repeat_**.

This has been a long time coming. Most of this was written in February, shortly after part one. Unfortunately, some really upsetting, painful life-altering things happened and I didn't come back to it (or for the most part, anything else) for a long time. But I've been writing again and this was one of the things I wanted to focus on. I'm hoping the subsequent chapters will be along shortly. Please enjoy.

* * *

Savannah breaks up with him on a Saturday. They're in their dining room for the first time in a week, eating pasta. Savannah's got a half-empty glass of red wine in her hands when she just says it.

"I think we should break up, Derek."

Just like that.

His good mood vanishes just like the rest of her wine once the words are out.

 _"Why?_ _"_ He asks her, and she swallows hard. He takes in the way she looks then, the way she's foregone her usual mascara and the way she's wearing her comfortable clothes instead of something pretty and sexy like she usually does when they finally have hours to spend alone together.

The way the paint on her nails is chipped.

"You're in love. And I-"

"Of course, I love you-"

"God, Derek. I know you love me. I've never doubted that. And I love you so much. But I can't get in between you two. I just _can't."_

"In between? What are you talking about, Savannah? I'm not cheating on you!"

"I know that! I know you never would. But you're in love with someone else. You've been in love since long before I came into the picture. I can't get in the way of that. I love you too much for that, Derek."

"Savannah, I'm not-"

"You're not, what, Derek? Not gay?" Savannah asks, and before Derek can even reply to _that_ particular part of their conversation, she continues, "It doesn't matter what you identify as. I've never cared about that. But you _cannot_ tell me that you're not in love with Spencer Reid."

"I'm not-Reid's one of my best friends, Savannah! There's nothing going on between us!"

She looks directly at him then, refuses to look away from his eyes.

"Are you trying to convince me of that, or yourself?"

It hits him then, sudden and sharp and painful. Is he?

Because that's what he's always done. Ignored the feeling in the pit of his stomach that wants to kiss the sad look off Reid's face the moment it hits, ignored the way he remembered the feel of his body beneath him at the wrong time, ignored how much it hurt when he realized his jokes about Reid's girlfriend were true, ignored it all.

He thinks about that first kiss. How Reid had looked up at him from that damned mug and Derek could see his eyes had been a little wet but there was something so vulnerable in him. Reid-no, it was Spencer in this moment-Spencer just looked so broken.

* * *

Derek takes the mug from his hand and places it on the table in front of them, takes Spencer's hand in his own, as he crouched in front of him. He'd meant to be comforting, reassure the kid that his mom's condition didn't matter and he couldn't have done anything more to save the unsub. But then, there is this spark in his eyes. And Reid kisses him. Derek stops thinking, and just acts.

And it's not like he hasn't thought about it. He's even thought about it WITH Reid before. Never seriously, never expecting it to happen. But this-this is different. This is frantic and hard and passionate and Spencer makes no attempt at leading anything but the kiss. He lets Derek control it. He thinks, maybe, that the only reason he lets himself give in, that first time.

When he wakes up, a few hours later, he thinks about leaving. About how terrified he is. But he's too tangled in Reid to move without waking him. When Reid wakes up though, he's still Spencer. It's Spencer's hand that wraps around him and slides up and down until they're both groaning and gasping. And Derek can't leave. Won't leave. He doesn't want this to be over.

And so he _doesn't_ and it _isn't_.

They spend the morning and the afternoon and the evening in a haze of fucking and sleeping, talking only to order takeout before they're silent except the moaning of mutual pleasure.

When Derek wakes up in the early morning hours that Monday, he doesn't want to leave. He wants to stay in this cocoon of lust and sweat and kisses.

But he has to leave. They could be called for a case at any time, and it was stupid to not be prepared for that.

And so Derek climbs back into Saturday's clothes, kisses Spencer long, hard, and rough, and doesn't say a word. He goes back to his own apartment, repacks his go-bag, takes a long cold shower, and then goes to work.

He's not sure what will happen when he sees Spencer again. He's not sure what he wants to happen. The weekend... the weekend had been _good_.

But he's not ready to date him and he's not sure he wants to know if what they had done changed things for the worse.

For all his skills as a profiler, he doesn't know what might come next.

But he meets a set of eyes across the bullpen and he sees Reid nod.

He has his answer, he supposed.

The weekend was with Spencer. This, now? This was Reid.

And so it went.

-x-

They didn't talk about it. Didn't have illicit texts or breathy phone calls. Morgan didn't go back over to have sex with him, and Reid never showed up at his apartment.

With a glance and a nod they kept the weekend to the weekend and Morgan was okay with that, really. Sex he could get from anyone. But Reid didn't let it affect what friendship they'd built and Morgan wouldn't either.

And it was okay, until his mother's birthday, when everything imploded, exploded.

-x-

Carl Buford had been a carefully kept secret, a past he couldn't erase but one he could keep wound up so tightly that no one would ever see in.

He had been a black smear on his memory, nights spent vomiting over a toilet bowl and choked off sobs into his pillow.

His father had warned him once, to look out for his sisters. He didn't know if his father hadn't known that he should have been looking out for himself too, or if his father had thought him smart enough not to get pulled into something like that.

Thinking about it made his chest hurt. Made the shame bubble up again until he wanted to hit something.

He hated Carl Buford more than any serial offender he'd ever helped capture, bring down. He saw the smug tilt of Buford's smile in every child abuser and rapist, and that's what he brought down when they cuffed the bastards.

And then he knew the team would figure it out. He didn't _want_ them to figure it out.

And he didn't want Reid to know.

But they did. They brought to light the child killings, and cast a light on the sexual abuse they couldn't prove without a victim.

And after all this time, he was too old.

But Carl Buford was in jail now. He was paying for some of his crimes. Someone might step forward now.

The jet is waiting for him after Damian's funeral. The team doesn't try to talk to him. They let him avoid their eyes and lean back in his seat and ignore the world. He puts headphones on, but doesn't play any music. Just reclines there and pretends he's not listening to the sound of Reid's voice in the seat at his back.

"In Gilbert Parker's _The Right of Way_ , he writes " _in all secrets there is a kind of guilt, however beautiful or joyful they may be, or for what good end they may be set to serve. Secrecy means evasion, and evasion means a problem to the moral mind._ "

Derek lets himself smile, a little, and continues to listen.

-x-

When he gets home, he stares at the ceiling above his bed for over an hour. He keeps remembering Buford's face when he thought he'd gotten away with it, when he said he could have said no.

Because he couldn't have said no. Buford knew how to play him and even if he had he wouldn't have stopped and...

And Derek calls for a pizza he doesn't really want to eat, anything for a distraction from his wandering mind. It's easier, here, than at his mom's place. Back in Chicago, back where...

He loses track of time, waiting. The pizza arrives and he sets the box on the table and wishes he could make himself eat, but he already knows it'll sit like a lead weight in the pit of his stomach if he eats when he's still strung this tightly.

He thinks about going out, finding a girl at a club or a bar and...

And then the knock on the door comes and he hopes beyond reason it's Spencer even though there isn't any reason for it to be.

But when he opens the door, it's Reid.

"I thought maybe you might want some company?" He says shyly, and Derek gets it. Last time something big went down with our team, we didn't do enough.

"Yeah, I'd like that," the words come out rougher than he meant them, and he let Reid inside.

Derek doesn't quite remember where their conversation went, after that. He remembers laughing a little, the tension in him easing at Reid's total distraction. He remembers managing to eat a whole slice of slightly cold pizza, and he remembers when everything switched.

"He didn't break me," Derek said suddenly from where he stood near the kitchen, his brain a thousand miles away from whatever they had been talking about. Reid stands from his place on the couch a few feet away and makes his way towards him.

"I know," Reid says with a quiet little smile that affirms his words. And then Spencer's mouth is on his, because this is Spencer, not Reid. He's answering what Derek asked for without asking, needed without knowing.

It feels like a schoolyard dare: "prove it."

And he does.

It's messy and hard and it makes something in him ache a little, and he feels like a teenager when they're rutting against each other with his front door pressing into Spencer's back but he needs this and he wants this and this is just...

 _It's right_ when nothing about the past few days have been anything close to that.

-x-

It's Reid who slips out in the morning, this time. It's a comfort, somehow.

-x-

It's hardly a month later when everything changes again.

He doesn't blame Reid, not for this. He understands why he would pull away, lock himself up and hide his scars from the world. What had happened to him must have been terrifying. They weren't trained for that, and Reid especially...

Maybe that's not right though. Reid probably made it through everything because of who he was better than any of them might have.

But it doesn't matter now. Reid is struggling, and even before Morgan recognized the glassy look in Reid's eyes he knew it.

Sometimes Morgan wonders what the worst part of it must have been, if it was the torture and the dying or if had been the choice he'd had to make between lives.

-x-

He doesn't know how many days clean Reid is when he shows up to check on him. Reid looks exhausted and gaunt but he doesn't look high and that's all that matters for that moment.

Morgan's angry that Reid had chosen this over a real coping mechanism but a part of him understands it too. Reid doesn't say anything as Morgan rifles through his shelves and drawers, but that's okay.

He lets him do it, and Morgan wonders if it's for him as much as Morgan.

"Thank you," is all Spencer manages to say before he places a hard kiss on Derek's lips and he gets it.

This isn't about Morgan and Reid, friends and coworkers who spend most of their lives together.

This is about Spencer and Derek in this moment and it's okay.

-x-

They start having sex again following the first case after that. He had shown up at Reid's apartment without a word and Spencer had pulled him in with a hand fisted in his shirt and Derek went without a single word.

-x-

Morgan enjoys sex. He knows that some people who suffered what he had do not and cannot. But he's never been one of those people. He has his triggers, of course-that's to be expected. But sex by and large doesn't set them off.

At first, it's easy to keep up with his usual ways. It's easy to be with a different girl every other week and enjoy a night with her. At first, it's easy to keep on being the way he is.

He doesn't know, exactly, what changes things. He still enjoys the sex, but... maybe it's looking at the way JJ's smile brightens her entire face when she's on the phone with Will. Maybe it's the way Hotch stares down at a picture of Jack on his phone.

It doesn't matter, though. He still goes home with a different girl, still has casual sex with no intentions of a relationship with her after.

It's just harder to keep sleeping with girls when something about sleeping with Spencer is more enjoyable.

But he doesn't want to date Reid, and Reid doesn't want to date him.

-x-

He almost tells Garcia when they're at a bar one night, a few weeks after Foyet's escape. Garcia is encouraging him to go dance with the hot brunette giving him bedroom eyes a few feet away but he doesn't want to. And it's not that he doesn't want sex or that she's not gorgeous and totally within his type.

It's just... he wants to push Reid- _Spencer_ -into a wall and fuck him right there. And Spencer's _not even here_.

But he doesn't tell her about whatever this undefined thing he has with one of his best friends is. He doesn't think she knows about them, not that they tried particularly hard to hide it.

Garcia doesn't know that he's comfortable with men like that. No one does, except for Spencer and perhaps his mother. (Because he thinks that's something his mother would just know.)

"I think I'm going to head out, baby girl," he murmurs with a quiet kiss to her temple.

"You okay, Morgan?"

"Just not feeling it tonight, don't worry. I'll be back to my usual flirty self tomorrow."

And if he goes home just long enough to feed his dog and take him for a walk before he shows up at Spencer's apartment, well that's his business.

-x-

But, whatever this thing is, it's not more than sex. They don't talk beyond a few simple words-if that. Not while they're doing this. Not while he's Derek and he's Spencer. They reserve their conversations for Morgan and Reid, for when they're working or all together as a group or in that weird interim when they're _just_ best friends. They've spent time together, calling each other Morgan and Reid and just talking or hanging out or watching movies and there _isn't_ any overlap between that and the sex.

It's like he's got a best friend and a fuck buddy and they're the same person without being the same person.

But Derek's okay with that. Really.


End file.
